The archive documents the scholarly career of Ellis Waterhouse, art historian and museum director. A major part of the archive
consists of notebooks, maintained from 1924 until his death in 1985, in which he recorded paintings seen in private and public
collections. The remainder of the papers are research materials
on various subjects within art and architecture, manuscripts of lectures, notes on sales, and reviews by Waterhouse and others.

Background

Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse was distinguished as both a scholar and a museum director. Waterhouse began studying art history
when the subject was not yet taught at Oxford, his alma mater, and by the end of his career was a major figure among British
art historians. Waterhouse's legacies to British art historical studies are his pioneering research in the areas of 18th century
British painting and the Italian Baroque, his exacting methods of provenance studies and connoisseurship, and his passion
for creating well organized and endowed scholarly libraries.